A few more details

  Since I didn't have much time this morning (and don't really right now to be honest) I'll give a few more details on what went on during my birthday holiday. My wife arranged all sorts of things for us to do and treated me extremely well during our time away. There was a custom made cake, helium filled balloons, specially made birthday breakfast, bottle of good champagne at dinner, you name it.

  My parents (well my father really) was on "fine" form for the trip and managed to annoy us, especially my wife, but also my mother to no end during our time. The guy really needs to learn to chill a bit and not get worked up about stupid stuff like traffic. Also put the GPS down, there is no need to live by it.

  I did get quite a few really good presents, especially from my wife. She got me a really good Lego set (there were a few) which has basically a programmable microcontroller, motors, sensors etc to build all sorts of robotic contraptions. I intent to have a good fiddle with it this weekend when I have a good amount of time free.

  Speaking of my wife, she did something really brave. After surviving the white water rapids and losing her glasses she only had her sunglasses left. Despite this she still went on a moonlight canoe trip we had booked for one night. Literally in the dark but with a really bright moon in the sky we were rowing out over a lake for a couple of hours almost. She not only managed to deal with doing that in sunglasses she got over her fear of being on water in the dark. Really proud she managed to do that.

  We saw an awful lot of nice scenery while we were in Oregon. Lots and lots of trees in that area. One of my birthday presents was a helicopter ride for 45 minutes up over the mountains and around the area. You could see so far from up there, some stunning views. We even drove up a gravel path to the top of a 10000ft mountain (well 9984 feet) and from up there you could see Oregon, Washington and California. Kind of cool for the west coast considering how spread out it is out here.

  I want to write more to explain how much fun I had on this holiday but don't have time right now. I'll probably waffle about other parts during the next few days as they come to me. For now though I just need to make sure I get something similarly cool arranged for my wife's 40th birthday next year.